


Antichrist Rhapsody

by NotpocalypseNow



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angsty Baking, Aziraphale implied he wants to marry someone who can bake and, Crowley dwelling on a drunk Aziraphale comment for over 50 years, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mutual Pining, Other, Rip crowley, Slow Burn, The Great British Bake Off References, rated M for things to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotpocalypseNow/pseuds/NotpocalypseNow
Summary: It’s been approximately 1 month and 20 something days since the Apocalypse That Wasn’t. Crowley and Aziraphale were closer than they had ever been during the last thousand years of tempting, being tempted, rinse, repeat. As the angel and demon continue their 6,000 year old waltz, the former antichrist, destroyer of kings, devourer of worlds wakes up from a cold sweat dreaming of things that could make even a demon tremble.A semi-normal human boy, a demon who can’t bake who once had a bad haircut, and an angel without a Netflix account with a sweet tooth must team up to tie up the loose ends of the so-called “ineffable” plan. To carry on as if nothing really… well, you know the rest.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 2





	Antichrist Rhapsody

**Author's Note:**

> No actual people from the Great British Bake Off were featured in this fic! Please let us know what you think, we have a lot of this written already and will be updating again soon.

The two of them should have become even more inseparable than they were before, at least that’s how Aziraphale thought it should have worked, but we’ll get to that later. A couple of Sundays pass, and then some more, and then some more until exactly 52 Sundays later, the former antichrist finds himself sitting on his bed with his dog as he does every Sunday.

This Sunday didn’t feel more or less unusual than any other Sunday, but this one had begun with a nightmare. Instead of the voices Adam had heard in his head when Satan was luring his powers out of him, this time he heard a dull lull, as if he were far away but also simultaneously right next to a crowded room of partygoers. Upon opening his eyes he saw a room full of eyeballs staring back at him, vacant faces smiling, and then vanishing.

This wasn’t the first day Adam had woken up to an event like this, in fact, it was the seventh. He thought he was going to live the rest of his life as a normal human boy would, that’s what he’d attempted to restore the day he denounced Satan, yet his nightmares had proven otherwise.

He didn’t want to involve Wensleydale, Brian, and Pepper quite yet or he feared they may worry about him so he did what any other sane, former antichrist would do. He closed his eyes and concentrated really hard, Dog whining on his bed as he did so. Asking, no—demanding an answer from the two otherworldly beings who promised to stay by his side at the end of the world.

Unfortunately for those two otherworldly beings, they had already begun their Sunday routines, and unfortunately for one who now goes by “Anthony J. Crowley”, he had been working on a mysterious project for the other that was about to be spoiled by the former antichrist on the 53rd Sunday from the end of the world because if they didn’t have answers, well, he’s not sure who would.

“Ahh there it is. I was promised this recipe would be the best he’s ever tasted, but how can I be _sure that’s true _?” Known throughout the millennia as Crawly, Crowley, and now Anthony J. Crowley hissed menacingly under his breath. “This doesn’t look as good as the time you made it on television, this one’s _flatter! _” Crowley slithered up to the man standing in his kitchen, lips turning up in a crooked smile. “Now, now, this won’t do at all. You wouldn’t want the rats to come back, would ya?”____

_____ _

_____ _

The cream puff things Aziraphale adored so much, they’re called “croquembouche” for those of you with some fancy distant lineage or access to google, and Crowley’s fascination with being able to cook them all started with a single sentence.

That brings us to the man standing in Crowley’s kitchen. It’s not Aziraphale, no, this man is someone Crowley met on television. Crowley had always been something of a cinephile but cooking shows were never really his thing, they were, however, Aziraphale’s. He’d left the TV on in his flat to keep the angel busy after encountering a particularly brown spot on the leaf of a plant that should have known better. Just like that, Aziraphale was officially logged into Crowley’s Netflix account, never realizing prior that he could watch food be made on these wonderful little contraptions Crowley enjoyed watching so much!

Crowley was not a fan of _The Great British Bake Off _but he would put up with just about anything that would give his angel that sparkle in his eyes he usually got upon seeing a particularly cute duck in the park, a child doing a good deed without his “divine” intervention, or some kind of devilish little dessert.__

____

____

That’s when the sentence happened. It came after a particularly long ramble about the beauty of humans who performed everyday acts of divinity--referring to the desserts--because they felt like it. “Baking is such an act of love, and oh it is _so hard _to ignore while watching. Sweet maths teacher Arthur, who couldn’t even cook pasta before he took up baking to carry on his mother’s legacy-- humans are amazing! The things I’ve seen on this program— it really makes me think anyone can be a baker. Maybe even someone like you, Crowley.” There was a twinkle in the angel’s eye when he said it.__

____

____

“Don’t bring the rats back!! I’ll show you how to do it, I swear!!” As far as the quasi-celebrity baker was concerned this was some kind of fever dream. He was in the middle of a peaceful sleep, having a fairly mundane dream about restocking cups in his new restaurant that was to be opened in the next year. He had always favored drinking coffee out of brown cups that tasted vaguely of clay, the faint smell of the mug reminiscent of the time he’d spent as a child in his grandfather’s cafe’. The Almost-Celebrity-Baker tilts the cup to his lips, the warm scent of coffee and clay mixing together interrupted by the feeling of tiny cold fingers protruding from the cup.

Rats, his bakery was overrun with rats and there were pink fingers emerging from every single brown mug. Waking up to his own screaming, he wasn’t sure how he got there but there was a tall man with red hair and sunglasses glowering down at him. “The Nightmare Man” he’d later call him in therapy.

“Oh good you’re finally awake, you were about to wake the neighbors.” The man was wearing skin tight black clothing that looked fairly expensive but even in the world of celebrity baking the baker wouldn’t be able to name the brands of anything he was wearing.

“This is all just a nightmare and when you wake up in the morning you’ll be home in your bed, peaceful and not at all bothered by my friends over there.” He shrugged towards the door, the sound of grimy little fingers scratching at it, Crowley’s grin widened by the look of fear in the man’s eyes. “You have 6 hours to teach me how to make the world’s greatest croquembouche. Anyone can be a baker. Now it’s your job to make me one.”

For privacy reasons we’ll be referring to him as “Baker A”. One might ask, why is there a Baker A and not a Baker B, to which one would be answered with something that says both something and nothing at all like “in due time, perhaps there will be a Baker B.” Baker A had just won The Great British Bake Off and quickly became a fan favorite in a short amount of time. His dreams of becoming a chef had always kept him going despite the weird hours and his sad backstory was a shoo-in to get him in front of a television audience.

“For your sake, I’d hope so,” he sauntered over even closer, the pan of croquembouche in his hand. “These had better be the greatest ever created by man or by--anything remotely manlike. In fact, if they’re anything otherwise, _he’ll _know and you’ll be the one paying the price. _Understand? _” Baker A nodded, having never imagined his life would be on the line for something like his sought after croquembouche, but his mother always said God worked in mysterious ways and that life was tough for television stars. Though, she’d never met the horrible Nightmare Man. He was demon of a man clad in black including an all black apron with white stitching on it that read, _For my demon _.______

_____ _

_____ _

“I said, _do you understand? _” Crowley asked again, Baker A whimpering and nodding in agreement. “They’ll be the best croquembouche a-anyone’s ever tasted, sir!” This didn’t feel unlike the charter school he attended in the states. “It damn well better b—“__

____

____

Crowley’s last words before disappearing as if he never existed from his own kitchen. “It damn well better b-.” Baker A felt himself finally be able to breathe, terrified of the sudden silence while also praising God as he was sure he was seconds away from soiling himself.

“BE or—” Crowley finds himself in Adam’s room, apron clad with a tin of croquembouche in hand and mid threat as he stumbles and looks around, neck turning back and forth violently. “What the— You??” His lip turns up with confusion, “You’re supposed to be normal. What in the hell is—” He turns to see the one soul he didn’t want to know about his recent croquembouche attempts. Not after the great Fires of ‘87. “A-Angel, what’s going on here?? Is this some kind of APOCALYPSE REUNION???” He laughed off his own confusion, deciding to trade it momentarily for nonchalance, hiding the plate of croquembouche behind him.

Aziraphale’s eyes grow impossibly wide as he recognizes the demon’s voice and is nearly overwhelmed by the mix of emotions he gets from the gleam of Crowley’s glasses. Instead of sorting through them, however, the angel shouts in a panic, “Crowley!? I can explain!!” Water sloshes around the spray bottle in the silence that stretches between them. Aziraphale’s mouth snaps shut with a loud clack of teeth before clearing his throat, “W-what are you doing here?”

“I summoned the two of you here.” A young boy’s voice answers Aziraphale over Crowley’s stuttering attempts at making up some kind of baldfaced lie that would have resulted in him muttering a nonsensical phrase like, “A-er-er-j-j-j-just visiting..?”

Another voice Aziraphale recognized, but one that left a bitter taste of anxiety in his mouth. It makes the swell of something he’d rather not name almost nauseating.

To better understand how the aforementioned angel Aziraphale, keeper of the East Gate, felt about his current predicament, you must know how the Principality partially responsible for stopping Armeggedon went about his business on a typical Sunday.

Sunday, the seventh day, the Lord’s Day—the most holy of days—meant the bookshop was closed. Aziraphale spent his morning seated on the couch with a book and a cup of cooling cocoa until ten to tea time. Then, he would change into his usual attire: the beige tattered vest, tartan bow tie, and his favorite hundred year old jacket, and met Crowley at the first alternate rendezvous, usually for lunch.

Their Sunday ritual differed from the other weekdays in two ways, 1) Aziraphale spent the majority of the day alone before, 2) he and Crowley met for a late lunch in addition to their usual drinks and dinner. Wednesdays were the most similar to Sundays because he and Crowley would get brunch at the Ritz, and the bookshop didn’t open until one, and after closing, they spent the rest of that evening getting completely shitfaced.

Recently, their regular Sunday leisure time had been interrupted by Crowley being increasingly cagey about responding to calls. When Aziraphale had finally gotten fed up and barged onto Crowley’s doorstep to ask what was happening, Crowley simply stated, “plant emergency” and shut the door.

Aziraphale, a being of habit, had been so startled by this break in routine, he tried to leave the building in a daze. The next hour was spent half-listening to the woman at the front desk talk about how much she adored Crowley.

It’s on this particular Sunday, the first Sunday after Crowley shut the door in his face and another spent without his best friend, that Aziraphale found himself leafing through a book of plants. He had just begun the world’s most awkward conversation with the plant Crowley had gifted him after they saved the world. 

Aziraphale stands before his wilting fern, stiffly pointing a spray bottle. He releases a pitiful looking mist, shoulders slumping. “Ah, well… I’ve never done this before but… hello there… plant--!” Oh, how painfully awkward. If he couldn’t hold a simple conversation with one fern, how did Crowley manage to scream obscenities at them for hours?

He was never a fan of the militant way Crowley approached plant care, but even Aziraphale wouldn’t be offended if this plant threw itself into the wood chipper after their dreadful conversation. He glanced to the right as if looking for Crowley’s devilish smirk, come to poke fun at his pathetic plant rearing. But there was nothing but air. 

He shakes his head, and bends closer, mumbling, “If that demon can do something about his plants, then surely—“ Something wraps around his wrist tightly enough to burn, and drags him into the narrow space between electrons with enough force to make him dizzy. 

When the world stops spinning enough to focus, Aziraphale finds himself next to a plush child’s bed, face-to-face with both Crowley and the former antichrist. The end of his squirt bottle lands in the face of a familiar black and white beast, who curls into a ball and cowers from him with a whimper.

“I brought you here,” a boy’s voice tiredly calls out over the hubbub.

“Adam?”

Adam folds his arms upon finally being addressed, “You scared Dog,” he observes. His voice doesn’t have a tone in it that implies he’d aimed to condemn the angel for doing so, he was simply stating an observation. “I’ve been having weird nightmares so I called the two of you here to stop them. I thought I wasn’t supposed to be the antichrist anymore, I thought I was supposed to be normal.”

Crowley’s eyebrow is quirked from behind his sunglasses, his mind not currently in the present but actually stuck a few decades in the past.

The year was 1963 and they were at Aziraphale’s favorite bakery in all of London, a bakery that is open to this day. A French bakery which was suspiciously described by culinary experts, travel blogs, and even Yelp reviews as a “hidden gem, humble, yet opulently decorated with a lovely view of the Thames River. Run with care by a charmingly handsome baker and his family.” Though, in 1963, it was just called “la boulangerie” and the most yelping it got was a small boy outside who would yelp the word “BAG-ETTES” out front.

Crowley had been feeling inadequate lately ever since his beloved Aziraphale had made both a drunken and startling comment regarding his haircut that was clearly influenced by the popular new band in town. 

Aziraphale had been dithering about a shop patron that made a poor attempt to steal one of the rarer editions, when he cut himself mid-sentence to deliver that ego-killing blow. “S’just-- oh, I can’t--I refuse to even look at you with that wretched haircut of yours.” Droplets of red wine splash out on the counter as Aziraphale gestures wildly, looking more personally offended than the time Gabriel insulted his choice of Earth fashion. “You look--well, to be honest, you look like the rag I use to dust the shelves once a century! What--what demon possessed you to style yourself like this?”

From behind circular black glasses Crowley blinked incredulously, “ _Paul McCartney _?”__

____

____

“Oh, and I’m supposed to know the names of all those you’ve--you’ve--tempted, just because they inspire you to look like a mop with caterpillars for eyebrows!?”

Which brings us back to the bakery where Aziraphale is chatting animatedly with the head baker and owner and the beginning of Crowley’s torment, as if the comments made about his hair only days before weren’t bad enough. The bakery had been struggling years ago, until by some miracle suddenly everyone in town knew his name and knew he had the best crepes, croissants, and croquembouche on this side of London. Aziraphale simply enjoyed having a reliable source for French pastries whenever he wanted and couldn’t bear to see it go under.

For all the usual business of the restaurant, today of all days, the bakery seemed to be empty, again, by some kind of miracle. This was true whenever they visited, usually because Aziraphale selfishly spent 15 minutes praising the handiwork of the owner’s son, an aspiring baker who was shaping up to be a fine heir to the business.

Crowley was trying to ignore them, not that he was bothered by their conversation or by the baker, himself. He just always hated the way the conversation would go, going as far to tell Aziraphale the bakery wasn’t his scene once or twice to avoid going with him (something he rarely did. Anywhere Aziraphale went was 100% his scene) and that’s when the unthinkable happened. 

As if it were a torture of Crowley’s own design, Aziraphale caught the demon’s eye mid-laughter, cheeks glowing and eyes bright, “Oh, you know me. Haven’t I always joked about marrying into your family so I could celebrate the new year with you and your croquembouche?” He touched the owner’s shoulder warmly, not at all shy about how forward he was being. They shared another laugh and the owner’s son seemed to blush under the attention. 

Impossible. 

Obscene. 

Marriage?? The angel actually thought about that kind of thing??? With a human??? Crowley could feel what could only be described as an imaginary heart dropping into the pit of his not so imaginary bowels he used every century or so. The angel addressed him again and he found himself being thrown back into his body. “Sure, anyone can do it. Even I can cook one a these,” he gestured at the croquembouche. “Bloody croquette boosh, sounds easy.” “Croquembouche” The baker corrected with a smile, he was such a damned pleasant man no wonder Aziraphale liked him so much. He was the exact opposite of Crowley. “Yeah, I can make one.” He sniffed, rubbing his nose which was, he found out later, a tell that he was overextending the truth more than was accurate. “I can make ten if I feel like s’not that hard.”

It _was _that hard.__

____

____

The worst part? 

Aziraphale never forgot about this so neither could Crowley. “That croquembouche you can make, my dear, will you make it this year? I’ve been dying to try since the 60’s.” Those blue owl like eyes blinking up at him with wonder. Crowley had been working on a recipe he’d secretly gotten from that baker who he now refers to as Baker B (I told you there’d be a Baker B) after a long event that Crowley now refers to as “The Baker Incident.” 

He shook his head violently, pointing the tin at Adam. “How the hell were we supposed to know it wasn’t over? You!! You’re supposed to be a normal kid, how surprised do you think we feel, eh?” He shakes his head and drapes his free hand on his hip. “What do you say we do, angel? It’s not like we have many resources nowadays, do we?”

Aziraphale’s lips twisted into a thoughtful pout, forehead crinkling through his squint of confusion. 

Adam rises from his bed, holding up a journal labeled _THE ADVENTURES of ADAM _, Summer 2019. “I’ve been having weird dreams for a while now, so I’ve been writing them all down. That’s what my mom said I should do, dunno how helpful it would be. There’s a few in there with the two of you in it, but it was just today that I saw a bunch of weird looking old guys staring at me when I woke up. They had these big, gross eyeballs but no faces. Oh, with HUGE teeth! Kinda looked like demons, but not like the one I met at the airfield.” He shrugs, flopping back down on his bed and petting Dog, “It’s just… I don’t want to put the others in danger if it is Hell rising back up to take me. Should I just… turn myself in so my parents and friends don’t have to suffer?”__

____

____

Crowley’s arms are folded, his mouth a thin line, his glasses hiding most of his expression but Aziraphale can sense the empathy radiating off of him, though he’d never admit to it if asked.

Aziraphale doesn’t react to Adam’s concerning descriptions of his dreams, distracted instead by the warmth of Crowley’s unspoken empathy and the feeling of dread brought on by Adam’s last question. With a little sigh, he sinks into the bedspread next to Adam, and claps him on the shoulder comfortingly. He takes the journal from him with a soft, pitying glance. 

“My dear boy… the two of us have been rather… disconnected from the forces responsible for your current distress.” He waves a hand through the air as he struggles to put their situation into words, “But I can confidently say that disappearing into the depths of Hell and giving in to their demands isn’t going to make this little “problem” go away.” 

He gives Adam a strained grin, putting on the airs of someone who knew what they were talking about and was taking control of the situation. Adam returns the gesture with raised eyebrows and a silent stare: very much the epitome of a judging, unamused teenager. “W-what I mean--is--” The angel’s confidence wavers, voice trailing off with an uncertainty that causes him to shake his head.

He holds Adam’s journal by the spine, eyebrows raised, asking for permission to open it. The boy offered him nothing but a half hearted shrug, almost casual enough to imply disinterest in Aziraphale’s reaction if it weren’t immediately followed by Adam’s attentive gaze. Aziraphale tries not to react to what he sees but accompanying the adolescent chicken scratch that is Adam’s handwriting are ghoulish drawings of the visions in his nightmares, spooking the angel in a way he hadn’t been expecting. He shuts the journal harder than he means to, handing it to Crowley for his inspection. He doesn’t recall seeing anything in the news about the creatures in Adam’s journal appearing overnight, but... 

Crowley’s eyebrow raised with curiosity when Aziraphale slams the book closed, the demon’s fingers plucking the journal from the angel’s hands and holding it up his face. “Ah yes, I’ve seen this before, mhm, yep, I’ve seen this hundreds, no, thousands of times.” He slams the book shut and hands it back to the former antichrist, folding his hands respectfully, the look of someone preparing to give bad news.

“Have you been watching… some _R-rated movies lately _?”__

____

____

Adam tilted his head, eyes narrowing, “I’ve been watching some lately with my dad. Why? Can that give me weird antichrist nightmares?”

Crowley’s neck cranes to Aziraphale as he repeats Adam’s words back in a mocking tone, “Can watching R-rated movies give me weird antichrist nightmares? YES!! Obviously, YES!” He dusts his hands off together and smiles, “Well, now that the problem is solved, we should be going and don’t SUMMON US AGAIN UNLESS Y-YOU KNOW WHO HAS CRAWLED HIS WAY UP FROM HELL TO DRAG YOU DOWN, HIMSELF!” He folds his arms and bounces on one foot, mumbling, “Not to be confused with he must not be named… He’s not real and all.”

Adam seems unbothered by Crowley’s outburst, pointing at the floor behind them. Crowley steps back, inspecting what Adam is pointing to.

Claw marks at Adam’s door indicate something was clawing at in an attempt to get in.

“S’probably just the dog. Angel, can I talk with you??? Over?” Instead of saying “over there” he trails off at “there” and jabs his finger back and forth to indicate outside.

He knew it wasn’t the dog. 

Aziraphale chuckled nervously, hand going up to his mouth before he flashes Adam a forced smile. He chokes out a response, voice peaking with anxiety, “T-the dog! R-right of course!! Sit tight, Adam! W-we’ll be right back!!” He sounds hopelessly neurotic, eyes refusing to glance over at the pointedly Satanic scratch marks.

Adam shrugs as if to say, “Well where else would I go. I called you here, didn’t I?,” as the two entities appear outside in the garden in the blink of an eye. From the window he can just barely make out their expressions. But Aziraphale feels Adam’s curious gaze raise the hairs on the neck of his corporeal form, causing his shoulders to stiffen. He straightens shoulders and puffs out his check, as if he could make himself taller and block Crowley from Adam’s sight.

He hisses through his teeth. “Alright, since you clearly know more about what’s going on--what in heaven’s name is happening here, Crowley!? What is your old lot doing?” 

“Sa--YOU KNOW WHO’S what’s going on here, angel! What are we going to do?? If we join forces with his former — _son _!!! He’ll be furious!! If you thought he was mad before, oh I can’t even imagine how pissed this would make him. He’ll dip our souls in hot sauce!! He’ll make a symphony of our screams and play it while he eats our corporeal forms with our souls like a… like a hellish little… fondue!!! Let’s… let’s tell Adam it wasssssss Dog. Yeah! It was Dog! He was… hungry and—“ Crowley slumps and drags his hands down his face dramatically. “You’re going to demand we do something about it, aren’t you?”__

____

____

Aziraphale’s nose crinkles with hatred toward the idea, “No. No! We simply just cannot lie to the boy and pretend everything is fine! He’s got an overactive imagination--who knows what could happen!”” 

He steps closer to Crowley and holds his hands out, exasperated with the other’s behavior. “Well of course I am! You want to ignore a request by the former antichrist and let You-Know-Who take back control and ruin everything we did to keep the world from ending?! I’d like to avoid round 2 of Armageddon, _thank you _.”__

____

____

He shakes his head with a huff, “Dog isn’t even a proper Hellhound— Adam wouldn’t have believed us, anyway!”

There seems to be a glint in Crowley’s eyes behind his sunglasses, “But if I had offered a more believable lie, you’d be tempted to make him feel better, then skedaddle?”

“W-What? No, of course not!” The answer comes after a beat of silence, bursting out of a flustered and frustrated Aziraphale, who looked cross that had almost given in to Crowley’s temptation. “We can’t abandon him! Not when he asked for our help so nicely.” His hand points in Adam’s direction before he turns that soft gaze back to Crowley, begging.

The demon, Crowley’s, face twisted into an agonized expression. He can’t say no, not to that face! He rubs his face and puts a hand through his hair, calming himself.

“…He...”

“…It...”

“…Ngk...”

“I think… he’s becoming a demon, angel.”

Aziraphale’s expression cracks in two, like the weight of the world is pressing down on his shoulders once more. He thought they were through with this: God’s Ineffable Plan surely didn’t include an apocalypse scare so soon after the first, right? A bitter taste fills his mouth as he thinks of the hoards of God-fearing people his side had converted throughout the years using the exact same trick. 

The denial rises like a shield, “No, he can’t be. That’s not how this works, right? There weren’t any lingering traces of demonic presence--I checked myself! A-and didn’t you say he was finally, free of his _other father _’s influence?”__

____

____

He wants to keep denying it, even as he turns to look at Adam who he can see petting Dog in the window sill. “He can’t be, he’s—he’s just a boy.”

“I know, I know. Let’s just… let’s just breathe. If we left him be he could be coerced into hurting the people around him, eh? I already know what you’re going to offer, I just don’t want to be the one who says it.”

Aziraphale presses his lips into a tiny smile, gaze flickering between the ground and Crowley’s face, before settling there fondly. “If you know what I’m going to suggest, then I won’t need to mention any of the risks we’d be taking by going through with it, right?”

Crowley skulks over to Aziraphale’s side, staring him down in his best attempt to be menacing in a show to uphold (what was left of) his integrity. “I won’t even say “if” because I know there won’t even be an “if” at this point, but angel…. You owe me dinner. A nice one.”

Aziraphale’s smile only widens in that obnoxious, self-satisfied way, which he tries to hide by turning away, “It’s been awhile since you’ve picked a meal, hasn’t it? Better make the most of it!” He sounds giddier than usual.

Crowley’s lip curls with an attitude he enjoyed adopting when it suited him, “Devour? Me? Not a big devourer, me. Though...there is one thing I wouldn’t mind giving a good ‘ol devouring, angel. You know that.” He liked saying those things to Aziraphale if only to taunt him and embarrass him, though, his strategy tended to backfire…

“Didn’t you retire the whole soul-eating demon act in the 40s?” Aziraphale raises a skeptical brow over his shoulder as he begins walking back towards the Young’s house. 

“That’s not what I—!! You!! You, you, you you you… you...damn it all, _angel _!!!” He shrieks after him, chasing him back to the young boy’s house. This…. had better be a damn good dinner.__

____

____

Unimpressed, Adam watches them through the window, grabbing Dog by the collar to steady him upon their reappearance in his room. The white one—Aziraphale?— approaches him with a pinched expression, lips pursed in a fine line as he takes a deep breath and refuses to meet his eyes. Adam furrows his brow, annoyed, “Are you adults done talking and making those important decisions, yet? If I had known you two were going to take so long to decide, I’d’ve just done it myself.”

Aziraphale’s eyes narrow with annoyance directed toward the child before him, “This isn’t a decision that can be made lightly,” Aziraphale scolds him with a shake of his head. He glances at a spot on the bed, and the seriousness of his comment is deflated by his whine of frustration, now unsure how to word the decision he and Crowley had just made in the garden. No better place to start but the beginning— 

“You know the promise we made to you before _You-Know-Who _appeared on the airfield? Right,” He nods to himself and looks as though he’s about to start explaining the situation from the Very Beginning, which no one realistically had time to hear.__

____

____

“We think it worked and was true in the moment, but one year later earth’s logic is trying to place you and it’s not exactly sure whether you’re a human or a Demon.” Crowley puts a hand in his pocket and slouches to look down at the former antichrist. “I think you might be becoming a demon like me… it’s not a… bad thing. It just means Hell would want to have you and that’s the one thing you don’t want, trust me.”

“So… you both think I’m becoming a demon? But my parents, my friends… will I be able to stay here with all of them if I’m some bloodthirsty, ancient evil?”

“Hey!” snaps Crowley with a point of his long finger, “Just because demons are evil doesn’t mean you’ll become bloodthirsty or anything. All I ever do is drink extraordinary amounts of alcohol.” He laughs and looks at the young antichrist with fake concern, “Which you’ll also be able to drink in about… how many years from now? 200? 300?”

Adam looks away without answering, petting Dog and looking into his soulful eyes. “Then…. I guess I can’t stay here anymore, can I?”

Dejected by Adam’s response to his joke, Crowley taps his foot with frustration and looks at Aziraphale pointedly as if to say, “it’s your idea, you tell him.”

Aziraphale ignores Crowley’s piercing glare, “...we want to invite you to stay under our protection while this whole thing gets sorted.” It was critical to maintaining the balance of the world and ensuring that whatever was happening wasn’t the start of Apocalypse 2.0.

“It won’t have to be a permanent thing either, think of it as a summer retreat of self-discovery! Just to ensure that your parents and friends stay safe from the forces of Heaven and Hell and whatever else is happening here,” Aziraphale’s tone is brighter once he’s finished.

Adam looks down at his journal in his lap, glancing over to Dog and petting his head as he collects his thoughts. “Okay, I can’t argue with that. I don’t want my mom and dad or the Them to get eaten because of me.”

Crowley claps his hands, “All right if that’s settled let’s miracle up a way for us to all get to Aziraphale’s. Quickly, now!” He claps again and explains himself to Aziraphale. “I was in the middle of somethin’, gotta get back to it. You know how it is.”

Aziraphale raises a curious brow in Crowley’s direction, “Yes, well, we can’t just take him from here, can we? His parents would worry about where he went. We needn’t draw any more attention to the poor boy,” the angel says firmly, clicking his tongue with a shake of his head, disapproving. 

Aziraphale stands straighter, folding his arms behind his back, “We’ll wait until tomorrow, disguise ourselves in the usual manner, and tell Adam’s parents we’re taking him. And that should give you enough time to finish up whatever business you need to get back to.” He tries not to sound as petulant as he feels.

“Disguises?” Crowley visibly slumps, a hand on his hip in disbelief. “Do you always have to suggest we Scooby Doo it up? Can’t ya just, I dunno, miracle up an excuse to have the kid go to your place for a month? I don’t wanna have to come back here in a dress first thing in the morning! We were supposed to get sloshed, angel!”

“I’ll tell them. Tomorrow, I’ll tell them I’m going to summer camp.” Adam suggests. “I want to tell the Them, too. They’ll miss having me around so, I’d like to be the one to tell them I have to go away on top secret business.”

Crowley lifts an eyebrow behind his glasses. “So you’ll just tell your parents you’re going away and you think they’ll let you go?”

Adam shrugs, “if they don’t I can just leave a note.”

“The last thing I need is a bunch of humans coming after me accusing me of kidnapping.” He looks to Aziraphale as if to say, “Angel, do something about this.”

Aziraphale stares at Adam with horror, shaking his head and mumbling under his breath, “Honestly, how appalling— next you’ll tell me you’re thinking of brainwashing them while we sort all of this out—“ he takes a calming breath. 

“No, I must insist that we return tomorrow to let your parents know what we plan on doing—well, without telling them what we’re actually doing. A tiny lie, if you will.”

Adam looks between the two of them, clearly thinking they’re making a big deal out of nothing but seems to accept this won’t go anywhere unless they do things the angel’s way. “Shouldn’t you be the one calling the shots? You are a demon. Aren’t demons supposed to be evil and demand stuff? If I’m becoming one of you, I don’t want some angel deciding what I say and do.”

Crowley looks like he’s been shot, reacting to the boy’s words by overdramatically posing as if shots had been more than just metaphorically fired. “Are you talking to me??? You may be the son of you know who, but you cannot get away with talking to me like that!!” 

Adam looks to Aziraphale, “You should stop him, he might wake my parents and then we’ll be in real trouble.”

“ _DON’T TALK TO HIM LIKE HE’S MY BLOODY KEEPER _!”__

____

____

Crowley yells at the same time that Aziraphale grabs him by the arm and tugs frantically. “Crowley!! Lower your voice, please! Weren’t you just whining about not making yourself more trouble?” 

Aziraphale turns a keen eye towards Adam, “I don’t appreciate you talking to us like this. Don’t think I can’t see what you’re trying to do.”

“I was only warning you about my mum and dad, honest,” Adam just shrugs, giving Dog a pat on the head and looking innocent.

Crowley points a vengeful finger at the boy. “The last person who tried to pull this on me’s name rhymed with Thing Sharles the Burst so I highly suggest you rethink this strategy.”

Adam yawns, “I’m going to go to sleep now. So… goodbye.” With that, Crowley and Aziraphale are both shoved into somewhere even smaller than the space between electrons, moving even faster than the sound of Crowley’s screaming which is lagging behind them by exactly .000001 seconds.

They both slam into the floor of Crowley’s home, the pan of what was once on it’s way to being amazing croquembouche falling down after them along with the spray bottle Aziraphale had been using to water the house plants.

With a growl, Crowley lifts his head, “ADAM!!” He curses the boy’s name, the space closing up along with Adam’s light shutting off as he and Dog snuggle up and drift off into a peaceful slumber.

At the end of Crowley’s shriek, he looks down at the angel who’d broken his fall, his sunglasses slipping off as their eyes meet. “A-angel, I didn’t mean to…” his anger almost completely forgotten, he stumbles off of Aziraphale and offers a hand to help him up. 

Aziraphale remembers tumbling forward after Crowley, the atoms of his corporeal form condensing impossibly, and opening his eyes to a familiar pitch-black ceiling that could only belong to Crowley.

The slam into the floor knocks the breath out of him— or it would have if angels needed to draw breath— but it shocks him all the same, startled and frozen stiff as he feels the heat of Crowley above him.

He’s actually glad Crowley’s the one who landed on him and not the other way around— after Gabriel reminded him how soft he’d become in the last 6000 years he’d gotten a little self-conscious about it and couldn’t imagine that bearing down upon Crowley’s waif thin form.

He reaches out blindly to take Crowley’s assist up, radiating a grateful warmth like a star energy as he righted himself. “Thank you, dear. Are you alright? Adam has turned into quite the—the— brat!” He stutters through his sentence with repressed frustration.

Crowley’s hand lingers on Aziraphale’s, his free hand sliding his glasses back on with an almost teenage clumsiness. “Yeah’mfine.” He draws his hand back and assumes a forced nonchalant pose. “He’s becoming a real brat, all right. He’ll be a dead brat if he mouths off to ME one more time—“

Crowley notices the cream pastries scattered across the floor and his expression plummets before he stumbles away from Aziraphale and picks one up off the ground, inspecting it with a frown. He finally had...a good feeling about these ones.

“Stupid flipped desserts!!” He shouts and throws it on the ground.

Crowley looks disgusted with himself, putting a hand on his neck and looking down at the pastries scattered across the floor.

The ground was covered in squished croquembouche and Crowley seemed to be taking it as a huge personal defeat.

Aziraphale turns to watch Crowley, squinting like this is the first time he’s noticed the pile of cream pastries they’ve been laying in. He picks up one of the crushed remnants of the dessert, giving the cream a questionable lick and eyeing Crowley curiously. He hesitates, “Did… did you make these?”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? Since they’re bloody...ruined.” He turns back to the other, a hand covering his face. “It was just something stupid. Don’t you have something you were doing before all of this? Go do that or something!” He scowls behind his hand.

Aziraphale frowns and shrinks back into himself, letting the crushed pastry fall from his hand, ignoring as it crumbled to the floor— and here he thought his friend was back to normal. He sighs, knowing that if he turned to look, he’d see his spray bottle leaking onto the floor, abandoned. The thought alone brings the frustration from his earlier plant failures back to the front of his mind, and he stutters through his remaining questions, “I thought that I—that we—“ a blink as he paused and collects himself, “So, did you stop wanting to get absolutely hammered together?”

His shoulders clench, posture becoming more rigid at the angel’s words. “No!” He seems to be really stuck on his next words. “It’s just... Didn’t you say that anyone could be a baker??” He sounds incredulous, like he was asking Aziraphale about a very obvious horrible flaw he had that could never be fixed. “Well I bloody can’t!”

“What?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows furrowed together as he grabbed one of the more intact cream puffs for closer inspection. They emit a curious combination of fondness and fear-induced anxiety that leaves Aziraphale’s mind racing as he tries to deduce what Crowley is implying. 

“Are you-- are you talking about my proposal to Pierre and his family?”

“What you said to the baker that day” He offers an expression that seems to be backed by years of torment stemming from that one comment in 1963 and Aziraphale’s latest fascination with that blasted baking show. “I wanted… to show you I was capable of being that person. The one you wanted to spend New Year’s with. The one you’d want to...Not that I even…!” His eyebrows furrow with pseudo anger in an attempt to hide the vulnerability on his face, the telltale emotion causing his expression to waver.

Hearing his woes spoken rather loudly from his own mouth, Crowley slumps. “It’s not the end of the world, but I wanted it to be the...start of something new. For you and me.” His head falls and he shakes it disapprovingly, “All this over some stupid little desserts...”

Aziraphale gives Crowley one of his fleeting looks: a soft smile that starts with a quick, shy glance before settling into an expression of dopey gratitude, like he’s flattered that Crowley, of all beings, had spared him such a thought. “Well, that’s… that’s honestly very sweet of you,” he can’t help the teasing fondness in his voice. 

“Oh, don’t you start with that “sweetness” junk, I’m not sweet! I just wanted to make it up to you, that’s it!” He puts his hands up defensively, locking eyes behind his dark black frames with the angel for just a moment before looking away with a shy slump. “So you never wanted to marry him, then?”

“What?” Aziraphale bursts into laughter, “Oh my dear, of course not! I looked you in the eye as I said it, didn’t it? I was trying to imply-- well. It certainly wasn’t meant for him to take seriously!!”

“So you…. When you said that and you looked at me you meant… but you said---Ah.”

Crowley was still taking it in with a stroke of his chin, eyebrows raised very high up on his face as the light of Aziraphale’s comment seems to completely alleviate over 50 years of pent up inadequacy. “So all this time I’ve been doing this whole… baking bit so I could…” His mouth is a line. “Truly you are a force to be reckoned with, angel.”

“It’s like talking to a mirror, honestly.” His eyes are warm invitation.

“Well now that the cat’s out of the bag, what do you say we just get sloshed and call it a day?” Crowley juts his chin out inquisitively, leaning only the slightest bit closer.

Aziraphale’s face splits into a wide, answering grin as he leans a bit closer, “It sounds like we have quite a bit to discuss, but I will say: I’ve always known the truth about you and no amount of alcohol is ever going to change that.”

“Don’t say thaaat,” he puts a hand on his hip, voice getting lower. “If you say that, I’m going to have to remind you that I’m the worst demon to ever set foot on this green earth, so I suggest you stop trying to imply that I’m as sweet as one of your desserts and start pouring that wine, angel.” 

“As you wish.”

With a snap, Aziraphale magicks them to his bookshop: it’s the kind of miracle that makes him feel guilty-- an act of selfishness that he justified by saying it kept Crowley from committing ‘demonic atrocities’ on the M25. In reality, it had only saved Aziraphale the headache and anxiety of driving on the M25 with Crowley at the wheel.

It was this particular miracle that marked another Sunday evening of Aziraphale and Crowley together in the bookshop, drinking bottle after bottle of Aziraphale’s ‘85 Bordeaux that neither party wanted to admit tasted ‘just all right’ once 4 bottles in.


End file.
